Two Bodies of Elements

Was it age 7, 8, or 9?
Three girls and a boy:
Lake, Billy Ann, Carmen,and me.
We went to Luther Burbank Elementary together.
We lived in the same apartment complex.
We did homework together, we created games--
We played King, castle, and maidens.
One day the maidens became bored of playing
In my Kingdom. My subjects don’t listen well.

We went to Carmen’s place, two doors down
To play a new game.
We went to her family's backroom,
A den or dungeon with green shag carpet.
On a long brown leather couch slept Michael,
Carmen’s older brother. He was Thor slumbering.
Thor after a battle with ice giants...
He covered the couch like a large homemade

Star quilt. With no shirt on, his bare skin still.
Lying on his belly, his long blonde hair
Flowed over the couch. He had a bulky body--
Heavy as sand, made up of a sun-tanned back
Hooked to a sloping rock shoulder, arm and hand.
His dark red shorts were too small for his legs,
Thick blocks of ice as long as the couch
Face hidden, he breathed out deeply
Like a whirlwind or a horse.

I thought everything
On him looked awkward, like a big scaly fish
With tiny eyes. That’s awkward.

He was tired from high school teachers,
Varsity football practice, homework.
Slowly my fascination built. I’d never
Seen a man before.
A frying pan, a fork and a butter knife--
Carmen brought them to the side of the couch
By the resting boulder. Quietly,
she prepared water with papertowls in a bowl
As a nurse would alcohol and cotton swabs.
        “We have to cut out his heart, because
He doesn’t need it” she said.
It reminded me of some helpless butchered sheep
Who became tasty roasted mutton at Grandma’s
Place at Sand Springs. She would sharpen her
Cutting knife with a smooth stone. She would place a
Plastic bowl under the sheep's woolly neck , cut tenderly . . .
       Billy Ann and Lake snickered at Carmen’s joke.
I was stunned, like I had fallen
off monkey bars, lost my breath . . .
            “Turn the patient over” Carmen ordered me.
I flushed red because I became afraid of his size.
What if he wakes up? He was a giant.
His back was thick as ham slabs, too heavy.
His throwing arm big as yellow grapefruits.
His legs like concrete posts holding up a pier,
Too big to handle. I could never turn him over.
        “Don’t be afraid.”
I walked to his side and touched his smooth back.
It was hot like a stove. His back moved hard.
Reacting like a cat, a tiger.
I imagined him turning over,
Eyes--deep blue, he’d have a thick chest,
My chest when I turned 20,
We’d have similar bodies.
2.
Looking toward the sand dunes by the empty black house.
I saw blue sky, brown sand, green yucca and lavender.
Earth. I knew a lizard sat under a yucca shading
Himself from the heat. The sand was too hot to play on.
Grandma washed her hair with yucca root,
Soapy and wet. She combed her hair with an old
Plastic brush. She wore just a red velvet skirt,
Nothing else. I could smell her pot of mutton stew
Boiling over with colored corn and squash. She knew how
To feed her young. She was as giving as the soil.
       Her skin was deep golden brown like
Her own frybread. Her arms were thick pinion
Tree branches. Her breasts were crested sand dunes
Without the sharp yucca, warm dirt, or sleepy lizards,
Just shifting brown sand the way a sidewinder
Glides across the warmth. Her aureoles were the
San Francisco peaks in the distance. Her soft prayers,
the yellowing corn stalks whispering in the wind.
       There was nothing as pure. Now, as I look back--
I still see Grandma washing her hair. Water dripping
off her nipples and soft belly, streaming into mud. I see
Her tying up hair into a tsiiyeel, a traditional hair-knot.
I still look toward the sand dunes and see grandma again and
A lizard scurrying across the hot sand
Quickly.
The rain fell yesterday over her black house.
She liked wet sand and dancing rain, grasping to touch
Her hair, her body. The strands of rain fell like dew sliding
Off spider webs, long and speckled, sweeping stories.
When a cool drop hit her brown hand, it soothed
Her dry skin. Her hands as strong as lightning
Snaking from the sky to lap the shaking earth.

Boom! Thunder . . .
She still smiles . . .
Each drop stretches from cloud to earth.

The long strands of her jet black hair are everywhere
Touching rain, filling our washes with running red water
For her thirsty horses, jumpy sheep, fevered lizards.
She still smiles, the deepness in her face is still--
Our red canyons spreading across nihi keyah,
Lifting up our land to the south of our fields
Of corn, melons, and squash to keep the Hunger People and
The wandering ghosts of Kit Carson's lost cavalry away.
Her smile shows her white teeth cutting into the Grand Canyon.
Her voice cries in the eagle’s wings, the sheep's bell, crackling
Fire, whirlwind over leaves, the male rain’s raging lights. . .
Her hands rub my aching leg, her breath warming my bone.
Her scarves float through the air as bluejays, cardinals, and doves.
Her footsteps track across the night from star to sleeping
Grandchild. Her fingernail is the new moon tonight,
Another is the white owl. I can say I still love watching sunsets
Remembering the yucca root soapy in her hair
Water moistening red earth into mud again. And I love
Smelling grandma’s sweet hair bringing the rain home.
Smell the rain and remember
Grandma Nalnishe's beauty.

Hershman John

Poetry and Other Writings

.

janesbit1@rocketmail.com

Email Mr. John at Hershman.John@pcmail.maricopa.edu